


intruder

by reaching4thestars



Category: OC - Fandom, Original - Fandom, Short Story - Fandom, horror short - Fandom, horror short story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23701156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reaching4thestars/pseuds/reaching4thestars
Summary: a short modern horror





	intruder

I woke from a crushing weight on my lungs. Air suddenly water. My nerves on fire, paralysed by a heat I didn’t recognise. I lay numb in the pooling foreignness of my own limbs. Each one convulsed independently, twitched once or twice and then they dissolved into a murky puddle. I was lying in the puddle of my own fear. Even as they dissolved gradually, I tried wriggling the smallest part of each limb but it was too late for the nerves that used to reach them. I flexed and stretched the green venous threads but nothing responded. My tongue felt like bitter lead in my mouth. 

Fear soon gave way to the realisation that my eyes were the only parts of my body that obeyed my panicked orders to move. They darted with a lively restlessness unique to them. All my energies channelled into counting my blinks. I spent an eternity like that, counting minutes on seconds. Counting my ticking sanity on dwindling blinks. When my eyes flickered downwards to try to steal a glance at the clock on the wall, I saw the faceless man at the foot of my bed.   
He had a black gaping hole for a face. The room began to spin but because I kept my eyes trained on the dark face, I maintained my hold on a slipping consciousness. 

When two eyes bulged out of the darkness, I realised it had them closed before. I wish I blacked out then. Their size was inhuman - fear-inducing. The pupils were still, and the tiny black islands in the white fixated on me. Because I stared at its eyes, I couldn’t see the rest of it. I couldn’t even see if its hands were reaching for me, even if I did, it would be useless to try to pull my frozen legs out of its reach. Instantly I hear a mother’s voice nagging me from the back of my room. You shouldn’t have slept feet facing the door. It was how the dead sleep.

But I didn’t have a choice. My room was not big enough to rearrange any furniture in it. I couldn’t afford a bigger room on what I make. It started moving slowly, ducking out of sight under my feet, under my bed.  
I couldn’t afford restful nights.   
I couldn’t afford any sleepless nights either.  
It moved with a slow, measured pace and peeped out at me from the foot of my bed.  
I’ve heard about this condition before that visits a person in their best and worst dreams.   
Is this what they call sleep paralysis-

It came into full sight and it moved its face right up to mine. If it had a nose, it would be touching mine. There was a pungent sick sweet smell overpowering my senses with a distant decaying undertone. I have never had any episodes before. But I heard that it could come without any warning or prior symptoms. The only comfort I had was to convince myself that this was a harmless hallucination. It didn’t matter if it stared at me, because it was harmless. Because it wasn’t real. Not a bit of it. Now, if only I wasn’t real too. The bedroom window creaked open on rusty hinges. With the roll of my eyes, my entire world tilted sideways. The intruder climbed in through the window nimbly, stealing under night’s cover. He had a black shroud over his face. Faceless men were becoming familiar in my life. The faceless man smelling like decaying flowers instantly became the lesser of the two terrors.

The burglar who stole under night’s cover:

This was House No 48 in my series of burglaries. I had a short month of heists before the festive season burns a hole in my pockets. It was a particularly vulnerable house, with a flimsy gate, isolated neighbours and crucially, very climbable walls. It was a house begging to be robbed. I had spent the past week casing for houses in this neighbourhood desolate in a quiet part of the city where rent didn’t cost half your salary, because a novice had to start somewhere. With the full moon as a torch on half dead batteries, I scaled the building and soon reached the bedroom window. It was unlocked but I held my breath as I swung it open on rusty creaks. Just my luck.

The first thing I noticed when my eyes adjusted to the darkness was the gaping eyes of the man in the bed. When he averted his gaze to something else, I followed out of reflex. The faceless man I saw at the foot of his bed was the only thing that had ever made me turn around in the middle of a job and run. The figure had its dark claws wrapped around each of the man’s foot. I knew I shouldn’t have become a house burglar.


End file.
